Perspective

I was going to post about how my reality started to set in. About how for the next 12 months (give or take?!) I generally will not be away from the baby for more than two hours. How I'm going to be in the cycle of nap-feed-burp-change-feed-settle-nap repeat for another 335 nights or so and how it made my chest ache just thinking about it. About how I feel I need to do more around the house, how I don't have nice things to wear, no holidays on the horizon, and only have the husband around to help me for another week. About the headsplitting headache I'd carried for 24 hours, the pockets of 90 minute sleep I'd been grabbed and how that just wasn't working, the squint in my eyes and stuffy nose that might or might not be a headcold.

About how I felt when returning from the shops and could hear the baby crying through the open window and I knew it was going to be cold inside and it was a miserable day and one of my dogs was acting like she hated me and why couldn't I find that receipt when I looked in the filing cabinet three times but the husband found it straight away.

About how I knew the first thing I would need to do when I got inside was sit down and try to settle that baby, reason with someone who can't reason, shift and shuffle and shoosh her in to some form of peace.

And then the news spread that two wonderful women who were due in July, women who I've been in contact with since discovering I was pregnant, had both lost their babies. One slipped away during childbirth, one about to be induced. Two in twenty four hours. Two who were experiencing something that I hadn't even considered once we'd passed that 12 week mark, that 20 week scan, even during  labour.

It puts it all in to perspective, really.

It's time to be thankful for the 'burdens' we bear.